Disney's Give a Day, Get a Day

Today was an early morning for this night owl. Actually, every morning was very early for me, but I was running on adrenaline. I look at pictures and I see the bags under my eyes getting worse as the days go by. But it's all good. I would not trade those days for anything.

Today's early morning included breakfast at Epcot's American Adventure and a presentation by Guy Kawasaki. To start off, we were back doored through a super secret entrance which I'm sure I will never see again. The World Showcase was completely empty except for us. It was cool & eerie at the same time. That is also something else that I will never experience. Except, of course, next year when I attend DisneySMMoms again. {wink,wink hint, hint}.We enter the American Adventure Pavillion and the tables are all beautifully set around the rotunda. There is a buffet set off to the side and we are asked to serve ourselves right away.

Afer a nice breakfast and great conversation with some awesome ladies, we are introduced to Guy Kawasaki from Alltop.com. He spoke and showed us how to use Twitter as a marketing tool. Guy says:“Why do I care that lonelyguy15 says there’s a long line at Starbucks?” He uses Twitter primarily to drive page views.

For someone who is looking to maybe change the direction of my blog, this was very interesting. So many things on Twitter that I was totally oblivious about. But still, I will probably still tweet about my life and even about the line being long at Starbucks. Because to me, it's all about the connections not just the clicks.

After Guy's presentation, we were given yet another gift. A Disney Sociall Media Moms T-shirt. Then we went to the Give A Day, Get A Day presentation. As we enter, we see a large wall of balloons on stage which I believe is just decoration. More on that later.

Celebrating volunteerism is Disney's goal for 2010. Disney hopes to inspire 1 million people to volunteer in their communities. Through the Give a Day, Get a Day program, Disney is offering those who perform volunteer service for a participating organization a free one-day admission ticket to a Walt Disney World Resort or Disneyland Resort theme park. To date, 600,000 people have volunteered and the program just started in January! On a side note, I have looked in my area and have yet to find an opportunity to volunteer. Maybe soon.

We are then told that there is something behind the balloons. It turns out that it's a sculpture. A sculpture made with over 115,000 individual cans of food. The sculptue has been certified by the Guinness Book of World Records as the world’s largest structure of canned food.

Ty Pennington is then introduced for the big reveal. Mickey & the gang come out as well. Then Ty gets a megaphone and yells "Raise those balloons!" All I can say is WOW!

Later that day this awesomeness was dismantled and packed to be distributed to the needy. There were supposed to be volunteer opportunities right there in Epcot that day, but apparently they had too many volunteers. I also just found out that Carter Oosterhouse was there as well, how did I not know about this???

We spent the rest of the day at Epcot and took full advantage of our Super Magic Fast Passes! In one day I had Fish & Chips for lunch in the UK, a Napoleon in France and a ton of Candy in Japan!!

Although I did pay a greatly reduced rate for this event, all opinions are my own. I was not asked to write about the events or The Walt Disney Company.

Next up: Dinner Impossible & Rockin the Glow Sticks